Welcome to Stormfield Manor. We're only a foyer and a sitting room right now, but soon there should be many rooms to explore. But for now, sit back, have some tea, and enjoy the scenery--you won't be able to see most of it once they put the walls up.

Sunday, November 05, 2006

(EDIT: This post has been updated since the fifth, with all the things I Should Have Remembered. If anybody thinks of any more, do tell me. ;-))

Okay, I want to post quickly now and say the Marshall Retreat was AWESOME! Aaron, Heidi, Tarja, Rachels, we missed those of you who weren't there. And Now I miss those that WERE there too, because they're, well, not here. (On the bright side, I do hear that I may be able to make long-distance calls inexpensively soon.)

Anyway, what follows is mainly quotes that I had to get down while they were still in my head. Bits of it are written in Aaron's Feast-Farce style, and there is even a little exposition. Oh, and despite what it may seem, we DID learn alot of great stuff. Pastor Preus was great, and he usually is; the other sectional speakers were great too; I think the sectionals were even better than the ones in Indianapolis.

--

Paul: Zeke, I have a joke about the sun. But it's way over your head.

Zeke: (Indignantly) No it's not!

--

(Actually this is a mesh of several conversations, but oh well.)

Paul: Evangelicals give us Lutheran nerds swirlies.

(Later)

Me: If the evangelicals give us Lutheran nerds swirlies, would that make the Orthodox those weird artsy people? And the Catholics the prim "good citizen" types who sit at the front of the class?

Paul: Yeah...

Zeke: And who would be the valley girls?

Dad: Mainline liberal Protestants.

Zeke: How about Benny Hinn and those guys?

Me: They're the Special Ed class.

Zeke: And the Baptists...

Paul: Are just the Bapetists.

--

(While pulling into the church, Paul having been in the car for six hours, Nat and Maggie for approximately three.)

Maggie: Wait! We've been in here this long, and we haven't discussed a single serious thing!

Nat: Alright, everybody say serious things!

Me: Um, scientist... Neutron...

Nat: What about Literary Theory?

Paul: Galileo!

Nat: Oh, like that song by Queen!

Maggie: Galileo! Galileo!...

Me: Ah well, it was a noble effort.

--

(Okay, my brother, Zeke, has a ahem, a self-imposed OCD where he HAS to say "Moo" every time someone says "Cow.")

Zeke: So whenever I go past a cow moo...

Paul: Wait, a cow moo?

Zeke: Moo.

Paul: Ohhhh, a cow moo moo.

Zeke: Moo.

Paul: Wait, a cow moo moo moo?...

--

Paul: I have decided that I have to say "cow" every time he says "moo."

Me: Interesting. Cow.

Zeke: Moo.

Paul: Cow.

Zeke: Moo.

Paul: Cow...

--

(Scene: The church, on our almost late arrival)

Paul: Rae, where is my wet noodle?

Rae: Ack! I have forgotten to bring a wet noodle!

Paul: (Shaking head sadly) Then we shall have to find something lamer to assassinate Ethan with.

Maggie: I have a plastic pistol! Bang! (Everybody dies)

--

Maggie: Ethan, here is your Ego. (Stomps on it.)

Ethan: Ack. Life is not worth living.

Maggie: Don't worry. Not everybody wants to kill you.

Ethan: I feel slightly better now.

Maggie: (Stomps on Ego again)

--

Despite the fact that I have mostly stopped taking notes at this type of thing because I rarely go back and read them, I ended up taking copious notes. Some examples follow:

"TOGA!" (In response to Seth G.'s note, "PARTY!")

Me: This is a picture of: Santa (naked) feeding an albinoe reaindeer marshmallows in a blizzard.

If I can get the Paint program to match up, I may attempt to post some replicas of other cartoons we did.

--

(Free time, Saturday afternoon)

Paul: MouthHouse Clue!

Rae: Vault and Mt. Dew!

MHers: I hope these walls are sturdy, 'cuz we're about to bounce off them!

(Some MouthHousers play Clue, meanwhile Nat and Paul and I talk. Eventually Nat and I get into Gaiman and Americans Gods, discussing the story as well as the possible metaphoric ramifications of its conclusion.)

Paul: So, how 'bout those Cubs?

Nat: What? What are you talking about?

Paul: Just trying to bring the conversation to a level we ALL can understand.

Me: But none of us know ANYTHING about baseball.

Nat: Yeah.

Paul: Oh yeah, that's right.

(Some lightsaber fighting went on during free time as well.)

--

(At the banquet Saturday night. I dressed in a black dress shirt, black pants, a white tie, gray jacket, and my fedora. I wasn't sure how well it all hung together, but people who knew more about it than I did said it looked good, though apparently I looked like a mobster.)

Rae: Let us all talk in proper British accents, since we are dressed so properly.

Me (Actually doing upper-class Brit accent): Zeke and Seth (G.) are acting even wilder than the rest of us; in fact they are acting like uncultured peasants. Therefore, I am their lord, Paul is the overseer, Nat is my assisstant, and these three (Maggie, Rae, Elizabeth) are the court.

(Everybody but the peasants cheer.)

...

Maggie (in gestures, as the speaker was speaking): Ethan, turn your head this way. Yes. (Later, with the speaker done): Here is a picture of you looking like a mobster and being serious. This is what happens when I am hyper and it's bottled up.

Me: It's lovely. No one shall ever see it. (Several people do anyway.)

--

One of my favorite things was the mixer after the dinner. We went across teh street to the church, and they taugh us all how to play euchre. We promptly switched to slaps. After a while, most of the MHers got bored, and started kind of congregating in a corner. We, ahem, we played "Ring -Around-the-Rosy." (It was, I beleive I've got this correct, Rae, Maggie, Paul, Harris, and me.)

After that we adjourned outside, to have a party in the parking lot. What was great about this is that we had nothing you usually have for a party: no boom box, games, even edibles. we just had the bunch of us, my fedora, and Maggie's cowboy hat, and we had enormous fun anyway. More than we'd been having inside.

Rae: I don't think this would be half as much fun if you didn't look like a '40s mobster.

Maggie (To me): Hello, I'm your stalker.

Me: Gasp.

Maggie (to someone else): I'm your stalker.

Ethan: I thought you were my stalker?

Maggie: I'm everybody's stalker.

...

Seth: They turned me into a newt! (Everybody looks at him.) It got better.

Seth: (Remarking on the MHers who kill and are killed and are up walking around mere seconds later) It's like somebody discovered the Philosopher's Stone, or something.

--

The next day, after leaving, we stopped by Rae's (family's) new house and had pizza, and saw their creepy bridge (my brother was the only one dumb enough to go over it). Then we hung around for a while, and listened to some music and danced badly and played air guitar and air drums (or air fiddle-- to Green Day (?)).

All too soon, it was time to go home.

Nat and Maggie were with us for a while. My ego suffered much abuse (oh, what's it worth, anyway?) It currently has a sword, arrow, and several boxes of toothpicks in it.

Me: Thanks alot, you just stuck a toothpick in my ego.

Maggie thinks she has my ego currently, and I will let her think that.

[This is Maggie's addendum, left in the Comments, but I put them here because they should be part of my patchy account. The "Me"s in this section are Maggie.]

I had a ton of Mary Janes, which are disgusting candies that look really old no matter what, and Nat looked at the wrapper of one to try to figure out what it's made of…Nat: CORN SYRUP, DRY ROASTED PEANUTS, SUGAR, MOLASSES, PARTIALLY HYDROGENATED VEGETABLE OIL [COTTONSEED, SOYBEAN], SOY LECITHIN, SALT, MONO & DIGLYCERIDES, HYDROGENATED VEGETABLE OIL [RAPESEED, COTTONSEED & SOYBEAN], GLYCERINE, NATURAL FLAVOR.Nat: *something about there being a girl named Mary Jane, who was chopped up and put into these candies*

Me: And that's why they can't make any new ones!

Ev'rybody: * laugh laugh*

Me: This is the intellectual conversation you craved! (we had not so long ago dropped off some others, and when we got back in the car someone said that now we could have some intellectual conversation)

Ethan: Galileo!

(Later)

Me: *draws blob in scetch pad* Ethan! Do you like this blob? The shape?

Ethan: I guess…

Me: *writes in blob "Ethan's Ego"* *draws arrow through it*

Ethan: Oh! Life isn't worth it!

--

In conclusion, I would like to say that I told Seth J. of Aaron's orders for me to kill him with a butter knife. since he knew, and I knew, and I knew he knew, no such attempt was made. However, just before we left, I managed to sneak a pen steb under his defenses, and Nat made impromptu throwing stars out of playing cards, assassinating Seth-- twice. Blood was everywhere.

Thursday, November 02, 2006

Yesterday I ended with 4400 words. Today I slept through or forgot to turn on my alarm, I'm not sure which. I woke up and the clock by my bed said ten o'clock. I was supposed to be at the library by 9:30. I ran out to the living room before realizing I had left them set ahead to trick myself into getting up early. I just barely got to the Library on time.

Sigh.

I wrote 350 words during break. I hope to pile up some words tonight and early tomorrow morning, before we leave.

I have learned to write faster by not obsessively going back and correcting every single bloody mistake, bu tI thnk its affecting my othere web posting.

Wednesday, November 01, 2006

It's 6:15 AM here. I hav ehad my caffeine, and am just groogy enough to be able to start. I would like to take this oppurtunity to officially Not Be Posting, though I have a couple posts saved that I may publish this month. I will also post short novel updates, not that I think anyone necesarily cares, just 'cuz I'd like a record for personal reasons.

About Me

Confessional Lutheran. Writer. Reader. SF/Fantasy nut. College Graduate, with a B.A. in English, minors in Communication and (almost) Theater. Currently pursuing an M.A. in Literature. Applying to the foregoing, probably an English professor sometime in the future. Theater person, kind of. Anarchist, sort of. Fledgling media ecologist. Metaphorical alchemist. And so forth.